Based on what?
The relative strength of the Premier League
- Thread starter Wumminator
- Start date
Manchester United's defeat of Celta Vigo means that for the first time since 2013 when Sir Alex was still managing, a team outside of Spain will win a European club competition.
The rest of Europe owes us.
The rest of Europe owes us.
At least look at the diagram you're quoting. Celta are this far behind because they have no matchday and commercial revenue worth mentioning. Something which is not really surprising since Ajax is the biggest (I'd guess) Dutch club with a rich and universally recognised history and Lyon are one of the biggest French clubs. So it's no surprise they dwarf a team that's only been back to La Liga for five years now.
The most depressing thing to me is actually how little those enormous gulfs in revenue meant on the pitch.
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Interesting that a week after @Wumminator said Celta are absolutely dreadful, terrible bunch of cretins who would not even win a point in the amazing PL (basically), they gave us a very hard game.
Difference is that back then CL was a proof of league's strength, now it is something we cannot possibly take into consideration because of how unbelievably strong Premier League is.
Tinkerman's Leicester winning last year, Tony-the-n00b's Chelsea going for the double uncontested, all the PL clubs out of Europe with shame, United shitting themselves against a low-table Spanish club worth 1/15 and you really think the PL is unbelievably strong? Believing your insular hype or clever irony here?
I'd say we have ourselves a hard game rather than them giving us one. The difference in their ability was night in day when we actually applied pressure, wrong tactics by Jose for sure, and at home they didn't even have a sniff.
is this a trick question?
Well of course we are a much better team. Just don't think Celta as nearly as dreadful as he portrayed them.
They were especially good against superior teams this season. Beat Barcelona once & gave Real a hard time in La Liga, knocked out Real in the CdR over two legs and now came close to throwing United out of the EL. They lost plenty of games too, but on their day they can play an aggressive and quite cultured pressing/transition game.
For me that's not depressing at all. It's a good thing.
I agree with that.
I think they have a better team and a better manager and the fact that they have only been beaten in CL by Real Madrid (probably should have won the cup twice recently).
Chelsea have done nothing in Europe recently and have won the league playing no European games (because they were abysmal less than 12 months ago).
Atletico wouldn't win the English league playing on Europe? They'd have wrapped it up long ago. Even with CL they'd win it with something to spare.
Agree. Nothing like seeing the underdog play the rich, storied team to the max nearly beating them. We hated it yesterday because it was us, but had it been Celta against Real, Barsa, Bayern or Arsenal we would have cheered on them with all our mights
Truly unbelievable that across all past 4 seasons the only team who beat Atletico in Champions League was Real Madrid. Thanks for pointing that out.
Top Spanish teams are seldom knocked out from CL by anyone other than a Spanish team or Bayern/Juventus, are they?
2014: Barca knocked out by Atletico, Atletico beaten by Real in final
2015: Atletico knocked out by Real, Real knocked out by Juventus, Barcelona win
2016: Barcelona knocked out by Atletico, Atletico beaten by Real in final
2017: Barcelona knocked out by Juve, Atletico knocked out by Real, Real in the final
Amazingly the fourth placed team went out in group stages between 2014 and 2016 and went out to a weak Leicester team this year.
Saw some interesting quotes from Bale today on this. Kind of confirming what we all know really:
“Every game in the Premier League you have to be at 100 per cent for 90 minutes or you will lose,” he told the Daily Mail.
“In Spain, you can be up at half-time against the bottom club and take your foot off the gas. You can rest players and take people off. If you try for 45 minutes you won't win a match in the Premier League.
“Every game in the Premier League you have to be at 100 per cent for 90 minutes or you will lose,” he told the Daily Mail.
“In Spain, you can be up at half-time against the bottom club and take your foot off the gas. You can rest players and take people off. If you try for 45 minutes you won't win a match in the Premier League.
nothing better to resurrect a thread that posting a months-old quote that was already discussed to death in this very same thread
The retirement of Fergie has proven to have not just affected our club, but also our rivals around us in terms of overall strength and quality.. I don't see the correlation between the english clubs decline in Europe and Fergie retiring as coincidence.
Fiorentina started yesterday with a midfield 2 of Jordan Veretout and Carlos Sanchez. (Fair enough they lost 3-0 
) Neither were good enough for a terrible Villa side that got relegated. Fiorentina are one of the better sides in Italy. There's numerous other examples as well (Thauvin, the de Jong brothers at Newcastle?) To me this shows just how strong the Premier League actually is. The thing is Madrid, Barca and Bayern are better than the top 4 in England. But in terms of depth, I don't think other leagues can compare.
) Neither were good enough for a terrible Villa side that got relegated. Fiorentina are one of the better sides in Italy. There's numerous other examples as well (Thauvin, the de Jong brothers at Newcastle?) To me this shows just how strong the Premier League actually is. The thing is Madrid, Barca and Bayern are better than the top 4 in England. But in terms of depth, I don't think other leagues can compare.Fiorentina certainly aren't supposed to be one of the best sides in Italy this seasonFiorentina started yesterday with a midfield 2 of Jordan Veretout and Carlos Sanchez. (Fair enough they lost 3-0
also, considering what we've just seen from everton, not the best time to bump this thread
I take your point but those 2 weren't good enough for one of the worst sides in PL history and now form the midfield 2 of one of the biggest (if not better anymore) clubs in Italy. How does that happen?Fiorentina certainly aren't supposed to be one of the best sides in Italy this season
also, considering what we've just seen from everton, not the best time to bump this thread
Fiorentina sold nearly every good player they had. Owners want to sell. Lots of stuff going on there
BTW: 2 players don't make a team
The premier league's riches has skewed your perception. Run of the mill players regularly thrive in the Bundesliga and yet can't cut it in the PL, but when these teams meet their English counterparts in Europe they regularly best them. Different leagues just have different requirements and some plauers just need a whole lot longer to adapt and are never given the opportunity, discarded like ragdolls at the end of the season and replaced with a similar model of player to try again.
The real test of premier league strength I.e what this threads premise is centred on will be in Europe and of course we have the regular excuse of a much more gruelling league schedule which whilst cliche at this point doesn't ring any less true. The style of the PL is tough on attack minded teams particularly in recent years where you need too quality cbs to make the system work. The defenders of Barca/PSG/Real/Bayern all have games where they look utterly inept and are roundly ridiculed and yet their managers persist simply because they've proven that they can play in sides where a high demand is placed on them. The teams that play this way in the PL don't have similar quality at the back. The teams compensate for this with a more defensive style of play and are given the plucky underdogs tag, the quality of the league and it's defenders is not yet conducive to long term success in Europe. Add in the physical style of the league and it becomes quite obvious why English teams have struggled. The managers will of course help the plethora of top ones that reside here now but they can only do so much before they are handicapped too.
There's a lot of money in this league and yet none it has gone towards long term stability and constructing football teams in a manner which can achieve success. I don't know how any of the English sides will fair this year in Europe but it will be interesting to see if any of the top mangers over the next 5 years can build sides and squads capable of taking back the mantle in Europe. At the moment I'm not so sure how feasible it is .
Better watch some Serie A mate, don't be upset, but you really are a bit clueless if you think Fiorentina has one of the best squads in Serie A.
I am not even a regular Serie A watcher, but from the top of my head Lazio, Inter, Roma, Milan, Napoli, Juventus all have better squads than Fiorentina.
Even Atalanta or Torino probably are on the same level if not slightly better. Then pay attention to the fact they sold Bernardeschi to Juve, Borja Valero and Vecino to Inter, Ilicic to Atalanta, or Tatarusanu to Nantes.
Add the integration of new players who need to be integrated, like Giovanni Simeone, Benassi, Vitor Hugo, Veretout, Eyseric, Gil Dias, Bruno Gaspar or Milenkovic, and also some turmoil in the club, new coach.
From all the clubs you could try to make comparisons between Serie A and the EPL, certainly Fiorentina atm is not the best example.
Those two were just an example, you wouldn't expect that two players that couldn't cut it at Aston Villa are now starting for Fiorentina, even if they're not the same force they used to be. I gave the Newcastle players as another example.
Oh it's that time of the year again where we judge leagues by comparing a couple of players. Like how the PL must be shit because West Ham paid €25m for Arnautovic who was basically gifted away by a Werder side that was battling relegation? Am I doing it right? Or how the former Hoffenheim squad player Sigurdsson just went to Everton for €50m?
Or how Atletico reject Alderweireld gets labeled one of PL's best CBs on the caf? How Schalke reject Fuchs, who was let go on a free transfer, won the league with Leicester and got a lot of praise on the caf?
Such a silly way of approaching this subject.
Or how Atletico reject Alderweireld gets labeled one of PL's best CBs on the caf? How Schalke reject Fuchs, who was let go on a free transfer, won the league with Leicester and got a lot of praise on the caf?
Such a silly way of approaching this subject.
Better try to compare Fiorentina with Everton, Southampton or something like that and not based in 2 players who played under a awfull team and awfull management, just my opinion.
great comment!
Simple..other leagues try to coach and improve players. In the PL, you throw a whole lot of money at the problem and hope something sticks. If you buy a midfielder and he looks terrible in 5-6 games, his destiny is sealed. No need to try a different approach, coach him differently, experiment with a different setup... He gets sold at a loss and another player bought to replace him. Rinse and repeat till something works out.
And if a manager does that too many times, he gets sacked, another manager comes in, and now he gets to be judged only if he 'brings in his own player'. The cycle never ends.
Very few managers actually coach in the PL. One of the very few who is excellent at coaching is Pulis. Admittedly it is mostly defending and boring football but have you ever wondered how he goes from one team to another, and regardless of players, makes them organized, resolute, and extremely hard to beat? These are often the same players who looked clueless under a previous manager. He is an excellent coach, simple as that.
Coaching is being replaced by endless wheeling and dealing.
Pochettino at Spurs also does that.
Majority of fans and media suffer from the money mania, most common expressions on the media and football forums are "splash the cash".
Desire for new toys, the most expensive on the shop, and when they discover the majority don't perform on auto pilot mode then comes the other popular sentence: "overrated" or "overhyped". Curiously enough, the same ones who say that (media or fans) normally are the ones who overrate or overhype them.
Arnautovic and Sigurdsson were in the Bundesliga ages ago. Terrible examples. I once questioned how/why Atletico let Alderweireld go but was told the competition was simply too strong at that time for him. Fuchs is hardly one of the Premier League's better players regardless of whether Leicester won the league.
No mate, you just don't get it. Despite the Premier League buying the best players from other leagues, spending more money and managers who have won more in their careers, other leagues are just better. This is proven by Tottenham going out to Genk, obviously the Europa League is a great comparison tool.
To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand the Bundesliga. The football is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of the inverted pyramid most of the tactics will go over a typical viewer's head. There's also Bosz'z offensive outlook, which is deftly woven into his teamsheet - his personal philosophy draws heavily from Ajax's Total Football, for instance. The fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these tactics, to realize that they're not just funny- they say something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike the Bundesliga truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the defensive positioning of Streich's Freiburg which itself is a cryptic reference to Hungary's midfielder Zakarias who revolutionised the false four position. I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those Premier League simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as Shalke's genius unfolds itself on their television screens. What fools... how I pity them. And yes by the way, I DO have a Dembele tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It's for the ladies' eyes only- And even they have to demonstrate that they understand true football.
A player who couldn't cut it at a team that got relegated from Polish Ekstraklasa went to Tottenham 4 years later and is now playing for Barcelona after a €40m transfer. Does that prove how shit Premier League and La Liga are?
Looking at one or two players making it somewhere and not making it elsewhere is not a good idea. Besides, current Fiorentina team is certainly not very good either, and Serie A is probably weaker than Premier League too. Fiorentina are probably about the level of Brighton.
Paulinho will play for Barca and he is a Spurs reject so Spurs are better than Barca ?
This might be Twiggi's masterpiece.